"Dear, dear!" said Miss Toogood, helplessly. "Then we shall have to go on. It's war. We can't stop."
And as she stood there, sadly contemplating the "war," in which, poor soul, she had never yet joined, except by sympathy, a little bill-distributing and a modest subscription, she seemed to carry on her shoulders the whole burden of the "Movement"—herself, the little lame dressmaker, on the one side—and a truculent British Empire on the other.
"We'll make them smart anyway!" cried Kitty Foster. "See if we don't!"
Delia hurriedly opened her business. Would one of them take a letter for her to London—an important letter to Miss Marvell that she didn't want to trust to the post. Whoever took it must go to the League office and find out where Miss Marvell was, and deliver it—personally. She couldn't go herself—till after the doctors' consultation, which was to be held on Monday—if then.
Miss Jackson at once volunteered. Her face lightened eagerly.
"It's Saturday. I shall be free. And then I shall see for myself—at the office—if they can give me anything to do. When they write, they seem to put me off."
Delia gave her the letter, and stayed talking with them a little. They, it was evident, knew nothing of the anxiety which possessed her. And as to their hopes and expectations—why was it they now seemed to her so foolish and so ignorant? She had shared them all, such a little while before.
And meanwhile they made much of her. They tried to keep her with them in the little stuffy parlour, with its books which had belonged to Miss Toogood's father, and the engraving of Winchester cathedral, and the portrait of Mr. Keble. That "Miss Blanchflower" was with them, seemed to reflect a glory on their little despised coterie. They admired her and listened to her, loath to let her go.
But at last Delia said Good-bye, and stepped out again into the lights of the village street. As she walked rapidly towards Maumsey, and the village houses thinned and fell away, she suddenly noticed a dark figure in front of her. It was Marion Andrews. Delia ran to overtake her.
Marion stopped uncertainly when she heard herself called. Delia, breathless, laid a hand on her arm.